Bringing It Home
The president continues making erratic public statements as his party struggles to mitigate expected midterm losses
Golf courses, Jon Husted’s fat dumper, and demands to rename “New Mexico.” There are only 15 days until the midterms, and Donald Trump is locked in.
On Monday, with early voting already underway in over half a dozen states, the president should be focused on boosting Republicans’ closing message to disillusioned voters around the country. Instead, he is upset that New Mexico is called New Mexico.
“New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America! The name would add great value and prestige to the State! Home Values and Incomes would rise, and you would be even prouder while saluting our beautiful American Flag! Maybe even the Crooked Elections, that New Mexico is known for, would become honest again!”
If New Mexico becomes New America, does that mean everything else in the union is Old America? Is it an admission that the rest of us are washed, that we need to scrap the whole thing and start over? Who’s to say!
It’s not the first time Trump has made such a demand. In September, he claimed on Truth Social that “many people” (who are most definitely real and plentiful) were “suggested changing the name of New Mexico, one of the great vote cheating states of all time, to NEW AMERICA.”
The call builds on Trump’s efforts to rename stuff, part of a series of lazy attempts to goad our supposed allies in North America and create an illusion of geopolitical dominance without actually doing any work. This includes attempting to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and Lake Ontario as “Lake America.” He’s also recently used, perhaps less seriously, about changing the name of the Atlantic Ocean the “Ocean of the Americas” or “Trump Ocean.”
The president’s fixation on New Mexico is just part of a longer string of erratic campaign trail moments in the last few days — many of which run completely opposed to the priorities and messaging being put out by Republican candidates. The president, whose D.C. construction projects have been deeply unpopular with the American public and rife with allegations of financial mismanagement and corruption, announced last week that he is moving forward with plans to take over a public golf course in Washington.
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“You have a golf course right now: it’s old, tired, beaten up, it’s useless,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “It doesn’t do much business. We want to do something great for Washington. We’re going to basically build a better golf course. It’s going to be one of the great courses.”
The president has been similarly unfocused on the stump. Last week in Kentucky, he went on an extended rant about how beautiful he found the body of Ohio Senator Jon Husted.
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“I don’t do this with men very often,” Trump said. “I started examining his body because I didn’t know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass. I looked at his shoulders, I looked at his feet, I looked at his hand, I looked at his jawline, studying … I then patted him on the shoulder, and it was like a piece of steel.”
Very good, sir. The price of diesel just hit $6. Hopefully no one notices.